Quotes by Craig Rice

“Yet he worked unceasingly, amassing a considerable fortune in the process, at turning clients who were indubitably criminals loose upon society. He always assumed that the words from a witness' mouth were perjury, unless he had put them there himself. He expected his friends eventually to double-cross him, and was neither surprised nor hurt when they occasionally did. Yet this did not interfere in the least with his very sincere liking for them.””

“Mother looked really wolfbait in rose.””

“A person usually talks more freely to one person than to two persons,” April said. “I read that somewhere.””

“what April called a whimsper, half whisper, half whimper),””

“Dopey Joe.””

“He said that the blood was not his own, but that of a comrade a few feet away who had been blown apart by an enemy grenade. And after having left the rice paddies of Vietnam, he eventually took up residence in the pew of a small mid-western church. For he said that he had been covered by the blood of one friend in combat and by blood of another on a cross in another sort of combat. And such was his love for both that he committed to forget neither.””

“Baby,” he said admiringly, “baby, that was as skillful drunken driving as I’ve ever seen.””

“Is she in trouble?" The question was quick and aggressive. Helene and Jake Justus were two of Joe the Angel's favorite people."Of course not!"Malone's tone indicated the question was ridiculous; that trouble wouldn't dare to even come into Helene's neighborhood. Which wasn't true. The dark bird of chaos spent most of its leisure time roosting on the Justus balcony, but Joe did not make an issue of this.””

“I just thought,” she sobbed, “about all the times I used to come here and how everything looked then, and then I didn’t come here any more but I knew everything was just the same, and he was here, and now he’s dead, and everything of his is gone, and it’s all so different.” “Sure,” Jake said, patting her. “Go ahead and cry.” “It was just as if I didn’t really know what had happened, because so many other things kept on happening, but walking in here like this made me realize everything all of a sudden, Jake, and it’s awful.” “A lot of things are awful,” Jake said, “but you get used to them.” “I won’t ever get used to this, Jake. I’ll just keep thinking about walking in here and finding him dead, even when I’m an old woman and all my teeth fall out and nobody likes me any more, and I’ll never forget any of it, Jake, and I’ll never be happy again as long as I live, never, never, never.” “Cheer up,” Jake said, “you haven’t got hay fever.” She stopped crying and looked at him. “What about””

“It isn’t just a question of keeping her out of the jug. Have you any vague idea of how moral radio is? Goldman would cancel her contract in a minute if this thing broke the wrong way. She’d be all washed up. Radio goes into the home; you’ve got to keep it clean.””